JOSE LUIS ARROCHA”I feel like the law failed me.”Jose Luis Arrocha didn’t lie when he applied for a teaching job at a city high school in 1996 – he never thought his honesty would hold him back.
Arrocha checked “yes” next to the job-application question that asked if he had ever been convicted of a crime.
He explained that he had been convicted nine years earlier of selling $10 worth of cocaine to an undercover cop and had served two years in prison.
The Board of Education rejected his application – saying he “posed a risk to the safety and welfare” of students and staff.
Arrocha, 48, was “surprised” and dismayed.
While in prison, he had earned an associate’s degree; and after his release he earned a master’s degree in Spanish and was working toward a doctoral degree.
“I feel like the law failed me,” Arrocha told The Post last week. “What I did was wrong, but I have tried hard to correct my mistake.”
Arrocha sued the board, contending that it violated a state law barring discrimination against rehabilitated ex-cons.
But this month, the Court of Appeals found the board “entirely justified” considering the seriousness of Arrocho’s offense and his “mature” age – 36 – at the time.
Arrocha now works as a tutor and adjunct Spanish professor at Medgar Evers College, where his students last week threw him a surprise end-of-school-year party and presented him with a certificate of appreciation “for outstanding and dedicated service.”
His case is quite different from that of Raymond Michael, 43, whom the board hired as a junior-high substitute teacher in 1995 despite a rap sheet that included nine arrests and a burglary conviction that landed him in prison for five years.
Michael managed to convince the board he had cleaned up his act.
All went well until he was arrested in March for public urination.
Splashed over the front page of The Post as the “Teacher from Hell,” he was promptly axed by an embarrassed board.
Special schools investigator Ed Stancik is expected to blast Michael’s hiring in a report to be released soon.
“The fact that somebody claims to turn their life around does not by itself mean the Board of Ed should have to hire them and take that chance,” Stancik said. “I’m just not willing to take that chance with kids.”
Spokesmen for Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew declined to comment on whether Arrocho’s rejection reflects a tougher hiring policy.